This work is the fourth Small Wars Journal anthology focusing on radical Sunni Islamic terrorists and insurgent groups. It covers this professional journals writings for 2016 and is a compliment to the earlier Global Radical Islamist Insurgency anthologies that were produced as Vol. I: 20072011 (published in 2015) and Vol. II: 20122014 (published in 2016) and Jihadi Terrorism, Insurgency, and the Islamic State spanning 2015 (published in 2017). This anthology, which offers well over six hundred pages of focused analysis, follows the same general conceptual breakdown as the earlier works and is divided into two major thematic sectionsone focusing on al-Qaeda and Islamic state activities in 2016 and the other focusing on US Allied policies and counterinsurgent strategies.

This work is the third Small Wars Journal anthology focusing on radical Sunni Islamic terrorist and insurgent groups. It covers this professional journal’s writings for 2015 and complements the earlier Global Radical Islamist Insurgency anthologies that were produced as Vol. I: 2007–2011 (published in 2015) and Vol. II: 2012–2014 (published in 2016). This anthology, which offers roughly five hundred pages of additional analysis, follows the same general conceptual breakdown as the earlier works, and is divided into two major thematic sections—one focusing on jihadi terrorism, insurgency, and the Islamic State in context and the other focusing on US-allied policy and counter-jihadi and counter–Islamic State strategies.

An analysis of insurgent warfare, looking at factors that contribute to insurgency.

In 2019, Islamic State lost its last remaining sliver of territory in Syria, and its Caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed. These setbacks seemed to herald the Caliphate's death knell, and many now forecast its imminent demise. Yet its affiliates endure, particularly in Africa: nearly all of Islamic State's cells on the continent have reaffirmed their allegiance, attacks have continued in its name, many groups have been reinvigorated, and a new province has emerged. Why, in Africa, did the two major setbacks of 2019 have so little impact on support for Islamic State? The Islamic State in Africa suggests that this puzzle can be explained by the emergence and evolution of Islamic State's provinces in Africa, which it calls 'sovereign subordinates'. By examining the rise and development of eight Islamic State 'cells', the authors show how, having pledged allegiance to IS Central, cells evolved mostly autonomously, using the IS brand as a means for accrual of power, but, in practice, receiving relatively little if any direction or material support from central command. Given this pattern, IS Central's relative decline has had little impact on its African affiliates-who are likely to remain committed to the Caliphate's cause for the foreseeable future.

"Imagine getting on the bus to go from one major city to another. It had been a long week and all you wanted to do is get home and take a nap while doing that. Imagine falling asleep and enjoying the rest on the bus. Now imagine as the bus is driving up a mountain you wake to hearing someone scream out something incoherent and you can feel the bus swerve to the right and through a road barrier and over the side of the mountain. Some of the people you are with on the bus fly out the window as it crashes down the mountain into a ravine while others fly around the bus slamming into each other, into metal and into shattering glass. As the bus slams down you can feel parts of your body break and you see other people die in front of you. You then lose consciousness. When you wake, you are lying outside the bus with glass and screaming people around you just above a bus that is now with its roof on the ground. Besides your own pain you can see the dead, the dying and the broken people all around you and dozens of people streaming down the valley to come help you and the people around you"--

This book is now on the U.S. Army's most prestigious pre-deployment reading list. Since 9/11, our deployed troops have learned many things. Though the war in Afghanistan is still raging, many of their hard-won lessons have yet to assimilated by the Stateside bureaucracy. To help, Militant Tricks has recounted America's progress in Iraq and Afghanistan from the standpoint of East Asian deception. Both countries were part of the Mongol Empire for over 200 years and thus prone to every sort of ancient Chinese illusion. Militant Tricks also contains the tactical "techniques" with which to counter an Islamic extremist's urban offensive. While some of these nontraditional techniques were risked during the Baghdad Surge, they may soon be forgotten.

Despite attracting headlines and hype, insurgents rarely win. Even when they claim territory and threaten governmental writ, they typically face a military backlash too powerful to withstand. States struggle with addressing the political roots of such movements, and their military efforts mostly just "mow the grass," yet, for the insurgent, the grass is nonetheless mowed-and the armed project must start over. This is the insurgent's dilemma: the difficulty of asserting oneself, of violently challenging authority, and of establishing sustainable power. In the face of this dilemma, some insurgents are learning new ways to ply their trade. With subversion, spin and disinformation claiming centre stage, insurgency is being reinvented, to exploit the vulnerabilities of our times and gain new strategic salience for tomorrow. As the most promising approaches are refined and repurposed, what we think of as counterinsurgency will also need to change. The Insurgent's Dilemma explores three particularly adaptive strategies and their implications for response. These emerging strategies target the state where it is weak and sap its power, sometimes without it noticing. There are options for response, but fresh thinking is urgently needed-about society, legitimacy and political violence itself.